And don’t forget his stop frame live animation “Fat Feet.” dear d.garcia, thank you for posting this manifesto/poem. i read that Oldenburg had died yesterday. another legend to say goodbye to. unfortunately, artists get recognized and then they get interpreted, frequently badly by curators, buyers, art historians and theorists who place them and put them. Often what is said has nothing to do with why or how the artist did what they did and then conceptually, everyone went against this problem and wanted to self-represent so as to be understood, or so that they would not be misunderstood and then were misunderstood years later when the "simplicity" of making material objects produced less dissonance. thank you for publishing his own words.
his art can be seen as "bloated corporate pop art" - but, i'd like to credit him with having made art more accessible to people, and for bridging gaps in low-high thinking about art, and certainly as a welcome counter move to AbEX bravado, even with his exaggerated scale.
today his iconic works can and should be critiqued for their benign, mid-century modernist appeal, maybe. nationalist? colonialist? banal? white-bred? maybe...democratic...i'd like to think more along these lines... pie, baseball, hamburgers - there is nothing edgy about these objects and by today's critical standards they may even appear to likeable to be art. not half the critical wit of Duane Hanson, but then, which one would you put in your yard? if you have a yard...he made many of the 'bloated' pieces in the early 1960s right about the time of this text you sent. i am going to give this to my students
Oldenburg brought a non-intimidating abstraction to art - by appealing to ordinary things and people and at a monumental scale. He boosted the little guy or gal; the one who made the pie with meringue. They are ordinary and democratic. There is something to be said for that as lasting monumental mementos of what may now be a failing democracy.
The baseball bat in Chicago is hollow. So tall. Rusting. Admirably iconic engineering achievement in this way, and yet, a kind of surreal Magritte's comb amidst smaller buildings and structures. Left behind by a giant player.
You can say, why make an icon like that, but I think it is more a relic that no one else thought to make. It doesn't exactly celebrate baseball, more the form of the bat. the giant diaper pin at the deYoung is similarly. Not an orgiastic nod to diaper-changing, rather, it is about the peculiar form of abstraction that occurs when something is oversized and maybe it is a monument to the decades before Pampers!
soft sculpture pieces are made from toxic awful materials probably, but i still like them.
lastly, the Ray Gun Museum is brilliant, as is the Mouse Museum. These works were so evocative when I saw them in New York in about 1987.
early installation of a slanted banal motel room is also brilliant. forgot title.
RIP Claes Oldenburg - he left so much behind to grace the landscape.
Benign can be a good thing
molly
Yesterday at a ripe old age of 93 Claes Oldenburg died. For those who
may know him only as a purveyor of bloated corporate pop art of his
later years may be surprised just how radical he was when he started out
and just how different he was from the pop-artists who bought
uncritically into consumerist ethos. His early ‘floppy’ sculptures (
constructed largely by his wife who got little recognition) are raw and
challenging. His drawings are some of the most vivid of the era. But to
get a real flavour of his outlook you can do no better than his
manifesto “I Am For…” 1961. Sixty years later it still rings true.
I Am For… (Statement, 1961)
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something
other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given
the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still
comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or
violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that
twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and
coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting
signs or hallways.
I am for art that comes out of a chimney like black hair and scatters in
the sky.
I am for art that spills out of an old man’s purse when he is bounced
off a passing fender.
I am for the art out of a doggie’s mouth, falling five stories from the
roof.
I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper.
I am for an art that joggles like everyone’s knees, when the bus
traverses an excavation.
I am for art that is smoked like a cigarette, smells like a pair of
shoes.
I am for art that flaps like a flag, or helps blow noses like a
handkerchief.
I am for art that is put on and taken off like pants, which develops
holes like socks, which is eaten like a piece of pie, or abandoned with
great contempt like a piece of shit.
I am for art covered with bandages. I am for art that limps and rolls
and runs and jumps.
I am for art that comes in a can or washes up on the shore.
I am for art that coils and grunts like a wrestler. I am for art that
sheds hair.
I am for art you can sit on. I am for art you can pick your nose with or
stub your toes on.
I am for art from a pocket, from deep channels of the ear, from the edge
of a knife, from the corners of the mouth, stuck in the eye or worn on
the wrist.
I am for art under the skirts, and the art of pinching cockroaches.
I am for the art of conversation between the sidewalk and a blind man’s
metal stick.
I am for the art that grows in a pot, that comes down out of the skies
at night, like lightning, that hides in the clouds and growls. I am for
art that is flipped on and off with a switch.
I am for art that unfolds like a map, that you can squeeze, like your
sweetie’s arm, or kiss like a pet dog. Which expands and squeaks like an
accordion, which you can spill your dinner on like an old tablecloth.
I am for an art that you can hammer with, stitch with, sew with, paste
with, file with.
I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a
street is.
I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street.
I am for the art of the washing machine. I am for the art of a
government check. I am for the art of last war’s raincoat.
I am for the art that comes up in fogs from sewer holes in winter. I am
for the art that splits when you step on a frozen puddle. I am for the
worm’s art inside the apple. I am for the art of sweat that develops
between crossed legs.
I am for the art of neck hair and caked teacups, for the art between the
tines of restaurant forks, for the odor of boiling dishwater.
I am for the art of sailing on Sunday, and the art of red-and-white
gasoline pumps.
I am for the art of bright blue factory columns and blinking biscuit
signs.
I am for the art of cheap plaster and enamel. I am for the art of worn
marble and smashed slate. I am for the art of rolling cobblestones and
sliding sand. I am for the art of slag and black coal. I am for the art
of dead birds.
I am for the art of scratching in the asphalt, daubing at the walls. I
am for the art of bending and kicking metal and breaking glass, and
pulling at things to make them fall down.
I am for the art of punching and skinned knees and sat-on bananas. I am
for the art of kids’ smells. I am for the art of mama-babble.
I am for the art of bar-babble, tooth-picking, beer-drinking,
egg-salting, in-sulting. I am for the art of falling off a barstool.
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art
of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for the majestic art of dog
turds, rising like cathedrals.
I am for the art of bread wet by rain. I am for the rat’s dance between
floors. I am for the art of flies walking on a slick pear in the
electric light. I am for the art of soggy onions and firm green shoots.
I am for the art of clicking among the nuts when the roaches come and
go. I am for the brown sad art of rotting apples.
I am for the art of meows and clatter of cats and for the art of their
dumb electric eyes.
I am for the white art of refrigerators and their muscular openings and
closings.
I am for the art of rust and mold. I am for the art of hearts, funeral
hearts or sweetheart hearts, full of nougat. I am for the art of worn
meat hooks and singing barrels of red, white, blue, and yellow meat.
I am for the art of things lost or thrown away, coming home from school.
I am for the art of cock-and-ball trees and flying cows and the noise of
rectangles and squares. I am for the art of crayons and weak, gray
pencil lead, and grainy wash and sticky oil paint, and the art of
windshield wipers and the art of the finger on a cold window, on dusty
steel or in the bubbles on the sides of a bathtub.
I am for the art of teddy bears and guns and decapitated rabbits,
exploded umbrellas, raped beds, chairs with their brown bones broken,
burning trees, firecracker ends, chicken bones, pigeon bones, and boxes
with men sleeping in them.
I am for the art of slightly rotten funeral flowers, hung bloody rabbits
and wrinkly yellow chickens, bass drums and tambourines, and plastic
phonographs.
I am for the art of abandoned boxes, tied like pharaohs. I am for an art
of water tanks and speeding clouds and flapping shades.
I am for US Government Inspected Art, Grade A art, Regular Price art,
Yellow Ripe art, Extra Fancy art, Ready-to-Eat art, Best-for-Less art,
Ready-to-Cook art, Fully Cleaned art, Spend Less art, Eat Better art,
Ham art, pork art, chicken art, tomato art, banana art, apple art,
turkey art, cake art, cookie art…
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